5/20/2021

John Ciardi's poem

 keeps coming to mind as I near the end of this year teaching this batch of 7th graders:

I wish I could teach you how ugly

decency and humility can be when they are not

the election of a contained mind but only

the defenses of an incompetent.  Were you taught

meekness as a weapon?  Or did you discover,

by chance maybe, that it worked on mother

and was generally a good thing …

at least when all else failed … to get you over

the worst of what was coming.  Is that why you bring

those sheepfaces to Tuesday?

They won’t do.

It’s ten month’s work I want, and I’d sooner have it

from the brassiest lumpkin in pimpledom, but have it,

than all these martyred repentences from you.


http://www.bingregory.com/archives/2012/12/14-on-flunking-a-nice-boy-out-of-school/#comment-115841

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